Artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly transforming professional writing, including grant development. While AI can generate proposal narratives, successful grant development remains fundamentally human-driven. The question facing institutions is no longer whether AI can write grants; it can. The real question is whether institutions will use AI to replace expertise or to amplify it.
Responsible AI Use in Grant Development
Successful institutions combine human expertise, funder intelligence, and institutional knowledge with AI-powered efficiency. Ellucian Grants Services (EGS) contributes the insight, context, and strategic direction. AI brings speed and pattern recognition. When those elements work together, proposal writing time is reduced while maintaining authorship and control over the final product.
AI is a tool, not a strategist. The quality of your input shapes the quality of the output. Regardless of how strong the draft may look, human review is essential to ensure accuracy, compliance, and alignment. AI shines when we use it for refinement, structure improvement, summarization, and administrative efficiency. Institutions that use AI responsibly stand out in the crowd.
AI in the Grants Office
AI is not eliminating the need for grant professionals; it is elevating their role. As routine application tasks become more automated, grant professionals increasingly serve as strategists, relationship builders, compliance experts, and institutional storytellers. Rather than generating entire proposals from a single prompt, AI is most effective when supporting specific writing tasks such as refining boilerplate language, improving transitions, enhancing clarity, and reorganizing content for stronger alignment with solicitation requirements.
EGS has found AI particularly valuable as a tool for proposal review and quality assurance. By providing AI with a draft narrative, solicitation, and scoring rubric, institutions can simulate an expert reviewer's perspective and identify strengths, weaknesses, missing elements, and opportunities for improvement. AI can also assist with technical editing, formatting, bibliography generation, and consistency checks across proposal components.
Grant writers do so much more than write proposals. When a grant is awarded, there is a full range of grant-related materials. These include case statements, news releases, donor and evaluation reports, budget justifications, audit verifications, support letters, and supplemental documents. AI can assist with efficiency and alignment over the course of the grant life cycle.
Institutions should establish clear guidelines governing AI use. Best practices include verifying all AI-generated content for accuracy, not uploading confidential or proprietary information into public AI systems, and ensuring that proposal narratives accurately reflect institutional capabilities and commitments. AI can assist with drafting, but accountability for the final proposal always remains with the institution.
Federal Grant Related Trends in AI
Beyond proposal development, federal investment in AI signals broader changes that grant offices should monitor. As federal agencies increasingly integrate AI into grant and program administration, research, and program delivery, applicants will need to understand both emerging opportunities and evolving expectations surrounding responsible AI use. On June 2, 2025, President Trump signed an executive order promoting advanced AI innovation and security. July 2025 saw the White House release "America's AI Action Plan," a strategic framework outlining actions focused on accelerating AI innovation, building domestic infrastructure, and enhancing security for 90+ agencies, including the U.S. Departments of Education, Labor, and Commerce. On December 11, 2025, President Trump signed an executive order creating a national policy framework for AI.
Additional Ellucian Grant Management Solutions
While EGS supports the development and submission of competitive grant proposals, Ellucian also provides a variety of software solutions for the subsequent grant management. Ellucian Finance enables grants administrative management capabilities, and its Research Accounting module aids with the grant budget development and management through forms and processes. This includes proposal management (grant budget development), grant maintenance (award management), multi-year grant budgeting, status and transaction inquiries, and grant events (billing/reporting periods). Customers using Ellucian Student's Human Resource module can also generate time and effort certifications and reports. Project Accounting, a part of the Colleague Finance module, similarly handles grant-related accounting functions as part of its administrative capabilities.
Final Thoughts
The grants profession has always adapted to new technologies, from electronic submissions to data analytics. AI represents the next evolution. Organizations that embrace AI thoughtfully, not as a replacement for expertise, but as a force multiplier for it, will be better positioned to pursue funding opportunities, improve proposal quality, and maximize institutional impact. The most successful grant professionals will not be the ones who rely on AI to write proposals, but those who learn how to strategically direct, evaluate, and refine AI-generated content. Human expertise remains the foundation of successful grant development; AI simply provides a powerful new set of tools to enhance it.
The mission of Ellucian Grants Services is to help institutions find, secure, and manage grants to advance student and institutional success. Discover how EGS can help your institution secure and leverage funding to achieve lasting impact. Request a consultation today.
